>> What would you've expected me to do or write then?

> Pretty much what Koan and I have posted. Basically, "Dave, why haven't you
> addressed the point of this thread?"

I think he did address the point of this thread when he wrote:

"I have no first-hand knowledge of ANY of the Phase V code going into MorphOS. The copyright issues certainly still apply -- if anyone studied, say, the Amiga Exec source code, then went and built their own clone, that would still violate copyrights. But I don't know that to be true either, and Ralph says it's not, so I'm more than happy to take him at his word."
https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?forum=3&topic_id=7824&start=61

However, whether you're satisfied with this answer is another matter, given the fact that Ralph's word on this was published a decade ago.